These is no such thing as "amateur art." There's art, and then there's other stuff, like crafts.
How artists supports themselves is irrelevant to the things they create. Many great artists were virtually unknown during their lifetimes but are now considered masters of their genres e.g. Kafka, van Gogh, Cezanne, Modigliani, Fernando Pessoa, Joseph Kennedy O'Toole, Vivian Meier.
William Carlos Williams was an insurance agent while he was writing his poetry, Kafka died completely unknown in Prague without having published anything (he left a note asking that all his manuscripts be burned upon his death), Pessoa worked a day job as an accountant in a small firm in Lisbon. Van Gogh worked as a flunky in an art gallery, then became a teacher, then became a preacher. He sold ONE painting during his life.
Some of the best, most provocative photography I've seen have been by people with day jobs (see Mike Brody's A PERIOD OF JUVENILE PROSPERITY; Brody is an auto mechanic, or Paul Kwilecki, whose 40 year retrospective of life in Bainbridge GA was just published by Duke University Press, was a small town hardware store owner). Likewise, some of the most cliched crap I've seen has been been by recognized "Masters" (see William Eggleston's PARIS for some truly bad trash that I'd have been embarrassed to turn in for a RISDY class would never have seen the light of day if it wasn't by Eggleston).
